Murasaki Shikibu: A Reign of One Thousand Years Christine Cousins Genji, the Shinning Prince, is a master of painting, music, calligraphy, and poetry, and as such would surely have recognized the mastery in Murasaki Shikibu's writing. The success of Murasaki's fictional Tale of Genji over the next thousand years, as demonstrated by the ten thousand books on the subject by the 1960s, cannot simply be the result of the peculiarity of a woman writer.1 Indeed, the evolution of literature during the Heian time period and its connections to Chinese influences contributed to a phenomenon in which woman were the predominant literary producers.2 A component of Genji's success can be attributed to Murasaki's innovative use of literary form through the previously unknown novel, but even one thousand years later, when the novel is not revolutionary, the work is still part of Japanese culture. Murasaki's execution in writing her work is another necessary component to Genji's success, since her skill in portraying the complex interconnections of the Heian period, as well as her plot and characters, underlie the tale’s merit. People have found value in this work for centuries, but Genji's legacy can be distinctly seen in the significance it has accrued in Murasaki's country during times of increasing modernization and Western influence. Translations of the tale into modern Japanese, including those by Yosano Akiko, preserve a national identity, particularly as it relates to literature and culture. Murasaki utilized the opportunities available to her as a woman in the Heian period to create a master work that would, over the course of a thousand years, influence the very form of culture in Japan. The Heian period received its name from the capital city whose creation marked the beginning of the period, Heian Kyō, the City of Peace and Tranquility.3 The Heian period is a remarkably long span of time, from about two years prior to the city's foundation in 794 to 1167, but it is the late Heian, from about 967-1167 into 1 Ivan Morris, The World of the Shinning Prince (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1978), 276. 2 Ibid., 200. 3 Ibid., 2. 4 which Murasaki was born, somewhere around the year 973.4 By Murasaki's time, the Heian had "reached a high cultural standard," though this standard was held by only the elite.5 Painting, music, and, of course, literature were valuable to this society in which "artistic sensibility was more highly valued than ethical goodness."6 Literature in particular developed in a distinctive manner through the Heian period due to the large scale of integration of Chinese culture. In the eighth century during the Nara period "every aspect of Chinese culture was avidly adopted."7 By the ninth century, however, this adoption was much more selective on the part of the Japanese, and by Murasaki's time the relationship between Japan and China was primarily that of past influences.8 A classical education in Chinese was still crucial to culture and scholarship, however, as Chinese remained the language of scholars and official practices.9 Kana had been developed as the phonetic transcription of Japanese, and allowed writing in vernacular Japanese.10 This had a peculiar effect on woman and their relationship to writing and literature, since Chinese "became the exclusive domain of the male," and kana became the domain of the female.11 Women were discouraged from learning the Chinese characters, and therefore they turned to vernacular Japanese.12 This effected the genres in which they wrote, for though women wrote poetry as part of daily Heian communication, much of the prose work that they completed were historical romances or regarded the private sphere.13 The diary became a prominent vessel for women to express and write about the spheres which were familiar to them,14 but it was 4 Ibid., 3; Richard Bowring, Murasaki Shikibu The Tale of Genji (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 4. 5 Morris, Shinning Prince, 170. 6 Ibid., 195. 7 Ibid., 6. 8 Ibid., 9-10. 9 Ibid., 200. 10 Ibid. 11 Bowring, Murasaki Shikibu The Tale of Genji, 10. 12 Roselee Bundy, "Japan's First Woman Diarist and the Beginnings of Prose Writings by Women in Japan," Women's Studies 19, no. 1 (1991): 81. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 94. 5 not a diary as might be imagined today.15 Women's diaries in the Heian period often differed from those of men in that they were not a description of day to day events, but rather a collection of reminiscences and personal moments or thoughts, often reflected from later points of distance.16 Women were seen as the primary literary producers of such genres to such an extent that men who wished to write diaries in the phonetic script might even use a female pseudonym.17 It is within this landscape of literature that Murasaki learned and wrote, and it was this landscape that shaped both the content and the form of her work. Within this literary landscape it is also important to note that Murasaki's circumstances were those of aristocratic women, who though possessing leisure time and education, still faced certain structured social roles. Additionally, many of the notable women and literary producers from the late Heian period were ladies in waiting at an Empress' court, where they enjoyed certain advantages.18 Women outside of active court service faced greater restrictions, generally being confined indoors or behind a screen of state, and were not allowed to show herself to men other than her husband or father.19 Aristocratic women were also still subject to a rigorous structure of marriage politics, which included the further complications of polygamy and different tiers of acceptable marriages.20 Principal wives were often arranged due to political and economic importance between participants of similar class, while secondary wives or concubines, such as Genji's young Murasaki, were still formal and publically accepted. Casual affairs were not only accepted, but part of a man's prestige, and carried out in a highly structured and proper manner.21 In many aspects Murasaki was typical for the female author of the time who took advantage of the genres and writing available to her. Murasaki also wrote a diary and poetic memoirs, and parts of 15 Richard Bowring, "Introduction," in Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs, Murasaki Shikibu, trans. Richard Bowring (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982), 19. 16 Ibid. 17 Morris, Shinning Prince, 200. 18 Ibid., 44. 19 Ibid., 210. 20 Ibid., 207. 21 Bundy, "Japan's First Woman Diarist," 218; Ibid., 220-225. 6 these texts are still accessible to this day, despite some difficulty ascertaining their order and state of completion.22 While these authorial feats place her within the common structure of aristocratic Heian women who were literate and possessed the leisure time to write, the diary is also often used to examine a life of a woman about whom very little is actually known.23 The actual name of Murasaki Shikibu is one such unknown fact; the name Murasaki come from a nickname based on the character of Genji's favored lover, and the name Shikibu comes from her father's title.24 There is general agreement that Murasaki was part of a strong literary tradition from her father and grandfather, and was even exceptional in that she knew the Chinese characters.25 She records in her diary that she learned the language from listening in on her brother's lessons, though she also describes the secrecy and occasional shame she felt at this knowledge.26 Murasaki was not unusual in her role as the female author of Genji, but rather in the Chinese, or the male, knowledge she possessed. Murasaki documents in her diary a moment when His Majesty remarks upon hearing Genji read aloud that Murasaki must be learned, perhaps even having read the Chronicles of Japan, and a woman defames Murasaki by saying she was "flaunting [her] learning."27 The Chronicles as history would have represented a realm of knowledge not normally available to women, one that would move Murasaki from her accepted realm into the male sphere where she could be subjected to censure. Her life, regarding both her writing and her experiences, was defined by the structures of the court. Despite her relation to the dominant Fujiwara clan she was far from the seat of actual power, even after her marriage to Fujiwara no Nobutaka in 998.28 Murasaki bore him one daughter, but was 22 Richard Bowring, "Murasaki Shikibu," in Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs, Murasaki Shikibu, trans. Richard Bowring (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982), 3. 23 Bundy, "Japan's First Woman Diarist," 81; Bowring, "Murasaki Shikibu," 3. 24 Ibid., 12. 25 Bowring, Murasaki Shikibu The Tale of Genji, 4. 26 Murasaki Shikibu, Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs, trans. Richard Bowring (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982), 138. 27 Shikibu, Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs, 137. 28 Bowring, Murasaki Shikibu The Tale of Genji, 4. 7 widowed soon after in 1001, and it was likely here during her widowhood that she began writing Genji.29 About five years after her husband's death, Murasaki entered service with Empress Shōshi as a companion and tutor, but even when describing in her diary her study of Chinese with the Empress there is a sense of secrecy to the work.30 It is not the discovery by the men, who actually gave the two women books to learn from, that was worrisome, but discovery by the other waiting women who could have continued the gossip that Murasaki already experienced.31 Murasaki's absence on a list of Shōshi's ladies in waiting in 1031 is used as a probable marker of her death, though she could have passed away several years before this point.32 Until her death the literary values of the Heian period shaped Murasaki's life through her ability to write, but also impacted her learning and were deeply intertwined with social conventions.